Let It Burn
by Rhianna-Aurora
Summary: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ... Spike's gone, and Buffy's dreams and sad memories are all she has left - or are they? A series of one-shots taking place post-season 7. AU. Disregards Season 5 of Angel and all the comics. Spuffy.
1. Chapter 1: Ashes

**A/N:** I'm not entirely sure yet if this is going to be the start of something bigger, or if I'm just going to leave it as a one-off. I just had this in my head, and I wanted to get it out there. I hope you enjoy it, either way.

_Ashes to ashes …_

She had the dream almost every night, it seemed. And it always started out the same. She would hear the disembodied voice of the preacher who had spoken at her mother's funeral, but she wasn't dreaming about Joyce.

There were flowers, and there was grass. A weeping willow beside a brook, a moonless night. It was always night, and it was always moonless.

_Dust to dust …_

There was a stone there … no body, not even ashes, but a stone, nonetheless. Beside where _she _had been, once. They had thought he might like it there … in the dream.

_Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. _

She heard Drusilla's voice in the dream, as well. She laughed her maniacal laugh. "But it's so funny," she would sing-song. "I knew before you did …"

"_You taste like ashes …"_

She would wake then, gasping, sitting straight up in bed, moonlight streaming through her windows. Sometimes she would scream out his name, sometimes not, but it didn't matter.

He was _always _there, and he would pull her into his arms without a word, and she would lean against him. "You went away again," she told him, and he would chuckle.

"Not in a million years," he'd murmur against her hair, and she would turn to him and kiss him as though her very being depended on it.

It wasn't like before, these times … it was deeper now, realer. His hand would snake up under the fabric of whatever she'd worn to bed that night, and she would give into him as he touched and caressed and licked and nipped at her skin, opening herself to him fully, letting him in as she'd never let anyone in before. "I love you," he would whisper, "I love you so much." And he would intertwine his fingers with hers … the flames would lick at the skin of their joined hands … but it wasn't like the first time, when the heat of his soul had scorched her in the most beautiful way … now it felt like nothing. Now it felt _cold_.

_I touch the fire and it freezes me …_

And then there were no more rough hands on her skin, no more whispered promises, and she wasn't even in her bed any more. She was beside that brook, that weeping willow, that stone that marked the site of nothing and everything, and it was night, and there was no moon, and she was _cold_, cold all over, and so _empty_ she couldn't bear it.

_I'm not ready for you to not be here …_

She would go to her knees then, and trace her fingers over the epitaph, but she still wouldn't cry. _Couldn't_ cry, even though she wanted to so badly. She wanted to cry for him, because didn't he deserve it? After everything he'd done, didn't he deserve her tears? But every emotion she'd worked so hard to get back, it was gone again, gone with _him_, and she wanted him to just come _home_.

She'd wake for real then, to the sun streaming through her windows, and the empty feeling gnawing away at her.

It had been 146 days.

_I want the fire back …_


	2. Chapter 2: William

**A/N: So okay, this fic is basically turning into a series of one-shots, all related to one another, dealing with Buffy and her feelings in the immediate aftermath of _Chosen_. They can all be read separately, if you so choose, but they DO all fit into the bigger, overarching storyline I'm working on, which will, eventually, be more than just memories and dreams. That's all I'm saying. ;) Enjoy.**

_His name was William. He wrote poetry and played the guitar and was always humming something or other quietly to himself. He told me I smelled like the sun …_

Every morning, as she went about doing all her morning-type activities … brushing her teeth, combing her hair, showering, getting dressed, even eating breakfast … she would run through her mental list of things to not forget. Not a to-do list for the day. Nothing mundane as that.

No, these were things like … the precise color of blue his eyes were, or the way he'd always smelled like cigarettes and leather and earth and stone and rain. Only a Slayer would think the smells of a graveyard were comforting, but there it was.

She thought about things like the way he laughed sometimes, not that evil laugh he'd do around everyone else to cheese them off, no. The way he laughed when it was just the two of them. Or the way he was always making up silly little poems - it was never any good, but she had liked it all the same, though she never told him as much. She had always liked it when he talked about England, as it had been when he was still human.

Or the way his lips felt moving against her own. The way he'd breathe out her name, so reverently, even though he had no need of breathing at all. The way they would fight for control, until, in the end, it just _didn't matter_ because the only important thing was that he was inside of her, and they were moving as one, close as two people could physically be.

Sometimes … sometimes she thought maybe it was more than just a _physical _closeness they'd shared. But she hadn't ever told him that. And now it was too late.

_His name was William. His eyes were blue, not like the sky, but like sapphires or the really deep part of the ocean. He smoked too much, but what the hell, it wasn't like it was going to _kill _him or anything. He looked _great _in leather and he made love like … well, like a demon. He laughed like a lunatic. And he loved me …_

It had taken her a long time to come to terms with that last part … too long, as it turned out. There had been times … oh, way back, before her mom had died, even … where there had been the stirring of … something … in her gut when she was around him. But she always quashed it, because you couldn't _love things_ that didn't have souls. But she cared about him, and looking back now, she realized, there was really no difference. If he was someone worth caring about, then he was someone worthy of being loved.

She'd been kind of an idiot.

One of the times that they'd had an actual conversation after … well, _after _… he'd told her that she made William come out again. She'd narrowed her eyes and asked him if that was some kind of weird euphemism, and he'd _laughed_, long and loud and bright, and it had made her laugh too, she couldn't help it, and then he'd given her that look, that one that he only ever gave her, and she knew - knew that _that_ was what he was talking about, _that_ was William, that was the part of him that he'd held onto all these years. That was the part of him that made him love her.

A lump formed in her throat and there was a stirring in her belly, and it wasn't just lust. She'd run away then, not wanting to feel that, not for _him_, not when he didn't have a soul, what did that say about _her_?

But from that day on, every time she'd thought of him, she'd thought of him as William. Oh, he was still Spike when she spoke out loud to her friends, or when she was talking to him, but in her head … in her head he'd become William. And when he'd come back … after he'd gone to Africa … it had been hard to remind herself to call him Spike, still.

He hadn't had a soul before that, no, but he'd always had _William_. And that was where the difference was, she thought. She never really talked about it with anyone … didn't want to have to endure all their pity when she told them that she had, in fact, loved that guy who'd died to save them all. But she'd done reading, on her own, and she thought she sort of understood now. William had been a good man, that was why Spike had been such a … strange sort of vampire.

But now Spike was gone, and he'd taken William with him. He was just _gone_ and she was alone, and she couldn't even make herself go into the basement of her _new _home, far away from Sunnydale, these days without thinking of him; without thinking of their last few hours together, when she should have told him, but she didn't, because she was sure that if anyone would make it out okay, it would be _him_. He was a warrior, _her _warrior and champion, and then after they returned home, she would tell him _everything_, and maybe, just maybe, everything wouldn't fall apart around her.

_You're the one_, he'd told her. And the funny thing is, after that night, she had thought that maybe he was the one, too.

But he'd had to go and be all noble and die for them, and she was proud, _so proud_, of him, but also _so angry_. It wasn't fair … it wasn't fair at all that as soon she finally thought she'd had it all figured out, it got torn away from her.

_He said I smelled like sunshine … but he took it all with him when he burned. He _was_ the sun then, and now the sun is gone._

_His name was William. And he was mine._


	3. Chapter 3: Dreams

She had dreamed about him the night she first met him.

Nothing like _that_, no.

She had been _terrified_ of him at first. He had scared her on a level that no other vampire had managed to do at that point in her life. It wasn't the death threat - she'd gotten pretty used to those. Someone seemed to want her six feet under on a weekly basis, so this new guy blowing into town, all leather and cigarette smoke and punk rock, telling her he was going to kill her … that wasn't anything new.

It was something about the way he'd looked at her … like he could _see _her, all the way inside her, where no one else could even get close. Like he knew just where she lived, and just how to bury himself there.

In that first dream, they'd been in a burning room … it looked like a church. Flames licked up the walls as they fought - or were they dancing? It was hard to tell the difference with this one. She hadn't seen him out of "game face" at that point, but he'd gotten close to her, and she'd seen the blue of his eyes, and then he'd bitten her and drank from her so deeply that she could _feel_ the blood leaving her body, she could _feel_ when she was empty, and then he ripped her heart out, laughing a gleefully evil laugh the whole time.

It hadn't hurt a bit.

She hadn't even bothered telling anyone about that dream, though, because she didn't think it _meant_ anything. She had dreams about vampires who threatened to kill her all the time - they weren't all prophetic or anything. They'd threaten, she'd have wonky dreams, she'd slay, they'd be dust … thus was the life of a Slayer.

After Parent Teacher Night had come and gone, she'd been blissfully free of him - both in and out of her dreams. At least for awhile. The next time she dealt with him had been during the whole Career Week debacle - that had also been the first time she'd seen him wearing his human face.

He was easier to deal with as a demon. She didn't know if she'd ever get used to these evil, bloodsucking fiends with stunningly beautiful faces. Spike was even handsomer than Angel, and she hadn't been sure that was even _possible_.

The fact that his eyes were as blue as they'd been in her dream had startled her so much that she'd momentarily lost her concentration and he and that psycho hell-bitch girlfriend of his had very nearly gotten away without a scratch. In the end, though, she'd scratched him up pretty good - something about a wheelchair? For _months_? Oh, don't think she hadn't teased him about _that_, later.

But even after her thorough kicking of his ass, he _still _wouldn't stay gone, he wouldn't stay out of her life. It seemed like he was _deliberately _trying to put himself there, to her. He wanted to save the world, he wanted to get Drusilla back, he wanted that goddamn Gem of Camera or whatever the hell it was called, the Initiative put a chip in his brain … no matter _what_ happened to him, it always seemed to result in him showing back up at her door.

Not literally _at her door_, just, you know. Around. In her town. Visible to her. Enough to be a nuisance. An _all the time, never goes away, gets more obnoxious by the hour_ kinda nuisance. The kind of nuisance that caused him to have cameos in her dreams almost _nightly_ after awhile, and it was irritating, all her nice dreams ruined by the stupid bleach-blond butthead who just _wouldn't go away_.

It was around Christmas her freshman year at UC Sunnydale, the year he'd gotten his shiny new brain-frying chip, that he'd been promoted to leading man in her dreams. _Romantic_ leading man.

She blamed Willow's stupid spell, entirely.

The first time she dreamed about him _like that_ … they were in the same church that she remembered from her very first dream about him, but it was empty this time, quiet. No fire, just a soft, bluish glow that seemed to give the whole area an ethereal glow. There was nothing but a cross in the middle of the room.

His shirt had been off, she could see it tossed in the corner, and while normally, in such a dream, she might be enjoying the view of such a well-muscled specimen in front of her … in this dream, she was crying. Not just crying, _sobbing_, tears running down her face as she watched him walk away from her.

He had crossed the room and draped himself upon the cross, smoke billowing up everywhere his flesh touched it. She had gone to him and pulled him away from the cross, just in time for the walls around them to start crumbling and caving in around them. He'd had his vamp face on, but she'd kissed him and it had gone away, and the floor fell out from underneath them, and the building came crashing down all around them as his fingers and his lips and his mouth brought her to completion, as she undid the buckle of his jeans and guided him into her …

Years later, that dream made perfect sense, but at the time it had been so weird, so _unwanted_. It wasn't _right_, not even _dream _Spike should be able to take such liberties with her. And what right did he have, being all … in her dreams and being the best sex she'd _ever had_? She'd considered staking him the next time she saw him. You know, on principle.

She had considered telling him about that dream, once. The night before the battle with the First as she had lay beside him in the basement, she had almost told him, how she'd dreamed of all of it … everything they were going to go through, but something stopped her. Instead, she had sighed and snuggled herself closer to him. "Remind me to tell you about a dream I had about you, after the battle's over," she told him, yawning.

His hand had been tracing lazy patterns up and down her arm, but it stopped when she spoke. "Why not tell me now, luv?"

She'd smiled up at him, her eyes heavy with sleep. "Incentive," she murmured. "Trust me, you _definitely _want to hear this … so you can't die tomorrow."

"Not planning on it, pet." He'd chuckled then, and the sound had reverberated in his chest where her head was resting. "That good, then, is it?"

"Mmm, better," she'd teased, her eyes glinting mischievously. "I could probably give you a _little_ preview."

He'd leaned down to kiss her then, and there hadn't been time for dreaming that night. The next time Buffy dreamed at all was a week after the Battle … after he was gone.

She had the same dream she'd had the night they'd met. The burning room, the dance … but this time, as he got close, his vamp face disappeared, and all she saw was _William_, and there were tears in his eyes. He kissed her then, fiercely, and then he ripped out her heart, sobbing the whole time.

And it hurt like hell.


End file.
